"The special symbiosis between CNU and its members is what makes us unique."—Lynn Richards, President and CEO
In 2019, CNU's remarkable relationship with our members and supporters helped accelerate the pace of change for New Urbanism. CNU members contribute to the movement as thought leaders, volunteers, and collaborators. CNU amplifies this critical work to change the conversation and influence policies and practices for designing and developing streets, neighborhoods, towns, and cities.
Your support and participation help CNU move rapidly forward with programs like the Project For Code Reform, Highways to Boulevards, the Project for Transportation Reform, and inclusive development work such as the Legacy Projects. While some of this work is supported through grants, most of it is not. Like you, we invest thousands of staff hours to ensure we are releasing the best product and doing our best work, even after the grant funding ends. We cover these gaps through CNU memberships and donations, which also support Public Square, core activities such as communications and program development, and our critical advocacy on emerging topics.
Highlighted accomplishments from 2019 include these:
- Congress leveraged our collective work on the Highways to Boulevards initiative to draft S.2302 and H.R.4101, bills that promote, support, and fund highway removal and street rebuilding to increase pedestrian-oriented mobility. Congress is relying on CNU to help promote them. During CNU’s Transportation Summit in October, members met with and educated more than 22 legislative offices on these bills.
- Now in its sixth year, CNU’s Legacy Projects, for which CNU members provide pro-bono technical assistance to underserved communities in the annual Congress’s host region, have maintained an implementation rate of over 90%—the highest rate in any technical assistance program.
- Our Project for Code Reform is tackling the difficult issue of accelerating local land use reform through an incremental approach. Developed at the state level, in partnership with local governments and statewide organizations, the collaborative team of CNU members and staff identifies changes that are sensitive to the capacity constraints many local governments face, meeting them where they are. Recent work has focused on enabling main streets and finding affordable housing solutions.
- In May, we released Building Local Strength: Emerging Strategies for Inclusive Development, which highlights eight case studies and a roster of tactics that can be used to strengthen existing communities in their efforts to minimize displacement and increase access to opportunities. CNU members were essential to many of the case studies and all of the tools.
CNU’s work with small towns and cities in places like Kentucky, Vermont, Michigan, Minnesota, Florida, and New York is only possible with your support. Please include CNU in your year-end giving, so we can continue this vital partnership to build places people love.